Virginia Senators working to push gun legislation forward in Congress

RICHMOND, Va. (WVIR) - U.S. Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine say they’re in support of bipartisan efforts of addressing gun violence. Now, they say it is about getting Republicans across the aisle to vote for a deal.

“We are the only industrial country in the world that has these kind of brutal murders and killings on a regular basis and I just hope and pray we are a better country than this,” Sen. Warner said Wednesday, June 8.

The Democrat says he has heard from people across Virginia asking Congress to do something.

“My office is frankly being overwhelmed by Virginians begging for us to take action,” Warner said.

“We’ve introduced that Virginia Plan bill pending in Congress, and now in the aftermath of these two horrific shootings in Buffalo and Texas we are having for the first time really since about 2013 significant bipartisan discussion,” Sen. Kaine said

The Virginia Plan would be a federal version of what the commonwealth adopted two years ago. A big part of that would be removing guns from at-risk people.

“We need to do much more. The red flag laws we passed in Virginia, I think, should be again a national model,” Warner said.

Also included in the proposed bill is closing background check loopholes, as well as mandating lost & stolen firearms being reported, and limiting the number of handguns that can be purchased per month.

“We need to have a vote, even if we fall short, so that the American public can see who is for common sense gun measures and who isn’t,” Sen. Kaine said.

Kaine says the House can pass legislation with its Democratic majority, but the Senate needs 60 votes.

“We fell just short in the aftermath of Sandy Hook, but I am at least cautiously optimistic,” he said.

“I’m strongly in support of the bipartisan efforts on addressing gun violence, it probably won’t go as far as I’d like to go, but making progress even a first small step at a national-level, I think, is extraordinarily important,” Warner said.

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